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Assassin's Creed Shadows releases November 15 (PS5, Xbox Series, PC, Mac)
- Thread starter --R
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I'm not the most devoted AssCreed player nor the most receptive person, but I think the animations were fine? 🤷♂️
Kinda reminds me of my own personal concerns with Tsushima debuting on State of Play deep dive where I thought Jin was floaty & slow in moving.
But those concerns gone when finally playing it.
Probably took time to adjust it, but it's functional for me & I'm sure Naoe too. 🤷♂️
Kinda reminds me of my own personal concerns with Tsushima debuting on State of Play deep dive where I thought Jin was floaty & slow in moving.
But those concerns gone when finally playing it.
Probably took time to adjust it, but it's functional for me & I'm sure Naoe too. 🤷♂️
Looks like Assassins Creed alright. Will probably give this a try after Outlaws and Avatar in Ubi+ next year.
I am still missing how this is supposed to be a fresh restart for the series? Looks like Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla in a different setting and I could only finish one of those three.
I am still missing how this is supposed to be a fresh restart for the series? Looks like Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla in a different setting and I could only finish one of those three.
Maybe it was Infinity/Hexe that are meant to reboot the series then.
Infinity is the launcher/hub for all of these games. None of them are rebooting it. Hexe is meant to be very different but it's not a reboot. Shadows was always meant to be the last of the big open world RPG ones.
Hexe is going to be something different gameplay wise but doesnt mean its gonna reboot anything. In fact, infinity is going to be a hub thing for the modern day that will unify all the games.
Yeah, I know that Infinity is more like an launcher thing. I thought Valhalla was the last open world game and Shadows already changing things. If this is like the last three open worlds I will probably quit after 10-20h again, but at least the worlds look pretty.
With reboot I mean Gameplay reboot. But the story certainly could use a reboot as well because it stopped making sense after AC3. Which is a pity, because I thought it was really cool in the older games, even the future stuff.
I'm hot off the heels of being blown away by the Tomb Raider 2013/15/18 trilogy and longing for more of that organic, beautiful and satisfying exploration experience.
I haven't played an AC since Black Flag (which didn't do it for me) and am wondering if any of the future installments would scratch the itch Tomb Raider did, or if the more open world aspects mitigates a lot of the intimate explorational mystery and beauty.
I'm also not HUGE on constant stealth, and I know some AC games are more heavy on it than others.
Thanks for any insight!
I haven't played an AC since Black Flag (which didn't do it for me) and am wondering if any of the future installments would scratch the itch Tomb Raider did, or if the more open world aspects mitigates a lot of the intimate explorational mystery and beauty.
I'm also not HUGE on constant stealth, and I know some AC games are more heavy on it than others.
Thanks for any insight!
Gameplay-wise Shadows is going to be very different than Valhalla by virtue of the two playable characters with different play styles (and the steath being much more advanced than Valhalla). The world is also meant to be smaller and more vertical.
It remains to be seen how different Hexe will be and in what ways.
Well, that sounds at least like a small change of focus. These wide open fields never worked well for AC IMHO.
What do you mean? Since Origins none of the game are sequels, but they have some repeating characters. I expect some familiar faces to be in Shadows too but I doubt they will matter to the story. If you're talking about the current day story, I have no idea. I don't think anyone cares.
By smaller they mean "Origins-sized", not "absurdly-big-Odyssey-and-Valhalla-sized"
They made 2 very distinct characters in this game compared to the past ones, so they kinda forced themselves to make new and unique animations from day one.
I'm sure there are still a lot of reused animations, and I don't have a problem with the practice, but it sure feels nice to see new a flourish in an Assassin's Creed game due to how long the legacy of some of their stuff dates back.
I still don't understand why Ubisoft+ is not available for PS5 users, seems like a huge hole and since the basic version (older titles but not launch games) is already included with PS+ Premium I just don't get it
i could play on PC or xbox but for these long ass kind of games I just prefer getting the eventual platinum trophy on my PS5 and while ubi games do support cloud saves and let you play on any platform taking your save with you, afaik they still don't support retro trophy propping so any progress you make isn't reflected in trophies.
Just makes it easier to wait for 75% off sales, whereas if ubi+ was available on PSN I'd probably sub for a month in Nov to check out Outlaws and Shadows.
i could play on PC or xbox but for these long ass kind of games I just prefer getting the eventual platinum trophy on my PS5 and while ubi games do support cloud saves and let you play on any platform taking your save with you, afaik they still don't support retro trophy propping so any progress you make isn't reflected in trophies.
Just makes it easier to wait for 75% off sales, whereas if ubi+ was available on PSN I'd probably sub for a month in Nov to check out Outlaws and Shadows.
Lowkey rewatching that video really cements something that I simply love about AC, you genuinely don't get that kind of navigation in ANY other game. So many games have tried to emulate the core basics of AC's climbing system, most especially Son'ys open world offerings like Horizon and GoT, but the OG has always outclassed them. Trying to take that kind of route in any other game would involve doing something akin to skyrim mountain climbing your way across the environment instead of genuinely flowing from structure to structure.
Especially because it's gonna be directed by Clint Hocking and involve magic...
So yes it will be similar to the last few titles. All three of which are very different in and of themselves especially because all three of them have different combat systems. Which this one will also have.
This is an RPG in the same vein as those games. Hexe is a gonna be a much bigger departure for the series as it's not an RPG.
So yes it will be similar to the last few titles. All three of which are very different in and of themselves especially because all three of them have different combat systems. Which this one will also have.
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Sony doesn't like big games being on subscriptions day 1. On PC it's different for Ubisoft and EA, they're not only competing with Steam but also piracy, so it makes sense to have a subscription with day one releases. For Xbox, they already had the Game Pass precedent anyway.
If you like AC and especially the old style of games and the setting of AC 1, yeah. I enjoyed it but it's not a mainline release so don't expect it to feel like one.
Edit: Also if you liked Basim in Valhalla and want to know his backstory.
It's okay-ish.
It's good to have an Assassins Creed be "small" (in quotes, because it's still a somewhat long game) and based around a city. Stealth and tools are pretty good!
But the parkour and the combat leaves a lot to be desired, and the story is just very uninteresting other than the ending.
Worth getting in a sale though!
the random flips in ubisoft games always make me laugh
they're way funnier in Watch Dogs 2
No Marcus, you don't need to do a backflip jumping down a pier
I just 100%'d it about a month ago and enjoyed it but its very much a "game for the fans" type of game. The story is a bit nonsense but the city and lore is extremely immersive, I loved hanging around Bagdad and there are hundreds of little lore factoids that pop up that are awesome to read, like the origins of astronomy or Middle Eastern medicine or words you kinda know but not really. Locations too, like the palaces and medinas and bazaars, just getting all the lore of it is fantastic especially if you remember that stuff from AC2 and the Italian cities.
The biggest issue is that its fairly short, I think it was 30 hours for me to 100% the game so probably closer to 15 just to finish the main story, and the story ends up kinda very meh and has little to no tie ins to AC Valhalla and anyone who finished that game has a lot of ... questions that this game SHOULD have answered but goes out of its way NOT to answer. I wasn't really disappointed since honestly I remember very little about Valhalla's ending but I could see some people being frustrated.
It also tries to continue the general AC theme of "Asassins vs Templars" but both sides come across as incoherently incompetent which isn't great for the overall lore. It definitely feels like fan fiction lore that doesn't fit into the, lets face it, completely broken whats-up-with-the-lore of assassins creed.
so yeah, I'd say as part of a ubi+ play or a $10-15 purchase its worth it. Definitely not as full price. I bought the deluxe version for like $20 and was happy.
I don't think any Asscreed game will give you what you're looking for. If I had to pick one, AC Odyssey has a shitton of optional islands and regions all with their own stories and vibes that you freely discover and explore, but it's a stat-heavy action RPG.
Fantastic historical tourism with a strong vibe, some of the better AC level design in a while with lots of entrances/exits to locations and a good amount of interiors and verticality, poor pacing due to a pick-your-target structure, not a great story that mostly just provides a bit of color to a Valhalla character, parts feel cheap and clearly like Valhalla DLC. Parkour etc. is inherited from Valhalla and works better due to the speed up, some tweaks, and the urban setting but its not an evolutionary step or anything.
Give you can get it for like $15 on sale I enjoyed it.
Some of the best level design in the series. And Baghdad is an absolutely fantastic city, one of the best locations in the IP. The stealth is great but not revolutionary. The structure of the game meant the story took more of a backseat compared to other AC games and it was very clear that when it came to the delivery of the narrative that they were limited by dev time and budget constraints. Definitely worth playing imo.
I hope combat is good this time, because it was kinda shit in the last three games, lol.
And while they did some thing differently the still felt very samey to me. Especially Origins and Odyssey.
Those parkour animations are very stiff and the animation blending needs a lot of work. It greatly diminishes the fluidity of the moment to moment gameplay.
One of my GOTY last year. I love the "old school" AC games. Its everything AC should be imo - social stealth + parkour + historical locations that you get to learn about
Meh. Six games later they still can't replicate the fluidity of Unity's parkour.
In addition to your points, what bothered me so much about Valhalla's imperfections, as someone who started playing it immediately after Odyssey, is that I hold the opinion that it feels much better to play.
Eivor's movements were heavier, the animations were better, the combat was weightier. I felt like I was playing as Connor in AC3 again.
In 35 seconds I went from being interested, confused, thinking different wasn't a bad thing and by the end the animations just didn't look great at all. There's like this weird pause when she starts a flip and it looks weird.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjUxGXf6jKo
Can someone explain to me what happened to AC ? Why aren't we getting this level of animation quality since Unity ?
Would you believe Unity launched 10 years ago on JAGUAR ?
It plays like crap though. It's great to look at, but actually playing it, is a pain.
Those modern AC games might not have animations as smooth as this but they're ten times better when it comes to controls and movement.
Unity is clunky and messy overall. Mirage is what Unity should have been imo, with robust stealth and parkour/platforming.
I'm no expert so correct me if I'm wrong, back then animators were doing it manually, by hand so to speak, now they are using the quicker method of running it through software to create lip sync and facial animations, but I'm sure there's so manual tweaking here and there.
its not really a processing power thing. when AC swtiched to more rpg approach they got rid of dense cities so flashy parkour took a bit of a backseat. also, with the rpg creed they made all the animations incredibly responsive, blending be damned. AC games used to have beautifully blended animations but they were basically always pre canned animations that would play out no matter what. with the rpgs, you can animation cancel or go from one animation to the next in an instant, which makes the game feel way more responsive, but obviously less good looking.
for the rpg creeds they made every surface climbable, handholds be damned. the extra freedom makes it a lot harder to script flashy animation sequences.
i do think the animation work is rather dated looking now (seeing npc animations being "jerky" like in early 2010 AC games as well is quite disappointing) even though i also think that their decision to prioritize responsiveness for Origins was a good one as unity and syndicate both feel rather input laggy.
but it also feels like that the industry has kinda left ubis animation work behind, which is annoying because AC games were literally at the forefront of it for nearly a decade.
i mean, it looks cool but does she have to do a flip every. single. time.
The trouble with Unity parkour is it LOOKS beautiful in videos like this, but when you try playing it yourself you notice two things:
1) The movement system feels a lot more sluggish than Origins onwards. It's animation-focused, whereas Origins simplified the parkour to feel snappier and more responsive.
2) Your character will frequently make bigger leaps than you expected, lurch in different directions than you intended, climb walls you expected to simply run past, etc. It's very focused on canned animations that often get triggered when you aren't expecting it. That was another intention behind simplifying the parkour system in Origins - making it more predictable.
I think a lot of people forget just how often our AC characters climbed walls we didn't want them to, and leapt off buildings we didn't want them to, when we played the older games. But for sure, Unity parkour looks phenomenal, and I'm excited to see if Shadows has been able to recapture some of that without the old trade-offs.
I especially loved the "parkour down" design of Unity, rather than relying on jumping into haystacks for a quick route down:
I dislike how I see snippets of flashy Unity parkour being posted everywhere as if that's something that players ten years ago specifically enjoyed doing in the game; like that was the "good ol' AC", It feels like revisionist history to me (I hate saying that).
There was barely anything special about the game, aside from the fact that it looked absolutely amazing.
There was barely anything special about the game, aside from the fact that it looked absolutely amazing.
Why didn't Ubisoft follow in the footsteps of a buggy mess that felt like dogshit to play? It's truly a mystery.
That is why I dislike the way they handled the protagonists, I wanted to play as Yasuke but doing all that cool stuff.
They should have done the same way as Odyssey and Valhalla, just pick who you want to play instead of gating gameplay mechanics for this or that character…
Eh. Odyssey and Valhalla are like that because that Serge Hascoet dude or whatever his name is, refused to let the teams have solo female protagonists. Eivor is a woman canonically. Kassandra is the Eagle Bearer and Alexios is Deimos canonically. I'm assuming Shadows isn't beholden to that same bullshit.
Look buddy I just want to play as a bad ass black ninja, cut me some slack ok?
Canon storylines should never take away player choices in good games. They are not mutually exclusive.